The Ethic of Unconditional Love

from “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” Martin Luther King, Jr,, delivered April 4, 1967

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).

Commentary: In this, one of his most remarkable speeches, Martin Luther King Jr. raises up love as "the supreme unifying principle of life," recognized by the world religions and certainly at the center of Christianity. It is time, in the course of world events, to practice "an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind." He also posits love's opposite, hate, as "a self-defeating path." He implies that love is the path of life.

Search yourself: Is love a universal organizing principle realized throughout the world? Can the various components,--nations, ethnicities, and religions--of what remains a contentious world practice "an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind?" Can you shift your attitude to love all humankind unconditionally?